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"Soul in Zen" - questions and answers after the lecture.
All copyrights to this document belong to John Tarrant, California Diamond
Sangha, Santa Rosa, Cal., USA
Enquiries: The Editor, "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young St.,
Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
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JOHN TARRANT ROSHI
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS after "Soul in Zen" Lecture
November 30, 1992, Berkeley, California
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1. QUESTION: (Question on what depth psychology is.)
JOHN: Well, I think depth psychology is anything that seems to take a long
while and a lot of money. But my sense is that what it does about patient,
would be one thing about it. And I think it's got a rather zen sense of inquiry
about it. That when we go into it, we're not necessarily trying to fix our
particular problem, like our fear of flying or whatever. That that might drive
us into the room to pay attention to ourselves. It's more a question of where
is my life going, and who am I, and those kind of questions tend to get
addressed. In my case there's a kind of interest, a kind of trust in what the
unconscious is trying to do as well as what my ego level awareness is interested
in. In that way, it's rather like zen. Zen rather directly attacks the ego;
whereas, depth psychology tends to more directly heal with it, rather than
karate or something like that. But in both of them the unconscious is brought
out more. What is greater than us that is also in us is invited into the room.
2. QUESTION: You didn't say very much about change and I just wondered what
you thought was implicit in your remarks and your experience that was . . .
JOHN: That's a great question. Well, I think we do change enormously and we
can't help it. There's absolutely no use in having a particular idea of how
we're going to change because we're never going to change that way. We're
somehow always willing to change A and B, but what always seems to get asked of
us is to change C and D. The things we're willing to give up, often we can
keep. The things we're no willing to give up are the very things we must
surrender. Think in small things, not great awful things. But ways of thought,
characteristic indulgences and particular feelings. My motive for change. What
I think we do is as best we can is we harmonize with the Tao and the change
happens and we have to have the good grace to accept it.
(Question amplification. Same speaker.)
JOHN: Well, we listen, we're patient, we do our meditation. My experience of
doing a lot of meditation was, my god, all sorts of things came up. I got very
good at deep states of mind and rather calm, but as soon as I thought I was very
good at it, something very tempestuous would appear. After awhile, again, this
is part of this work that I'm sharing with you, after awhile I began to realize
that that, too, was part of it. When the something--the pain, the sorrow or
whatever it is--appears. Or arrogance or anger or some pomposity, whatever it
is, appears because it's, in a sense, trying to come home. And that's a lot of
the change, to notice that and somehow come to terms with that stuff when it
comes up.
QUESTION: (Same questioner) I was thinking more in terms of the initial
experience that you talked about.
JOHN: The enlightenment experience?
QUESTION: Yes.
JOHN: Well, the enlightenment experience is--I think somebody told me, sitting
in the audience here, actually, that Suzuki Shunryu Roshi described it as a 360
degree point of view change. So there's the old saying in zen that when you
begin to practice mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers and
everything--breakfast is breakfast--and that's how it is. Then after you've
been practicing for awhile mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers
so you begin to see the transparence of the world which is both the glow and the
beauty and also the insubstantiality of things is just so evident. That this is
a dream that we are living in. There's just no doubt about that. And the dream
has different flavors and so on, but it's a dream. But then at the end of
training mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers again. That in some way
we do change our point of view enormously and then we let even that go and we
don't hang onto that. And the point of view, I think--there are consequences.
Joy is a consequence of a true enlightenment experience. Compassion seems to be
a consequence. You can't help yourself. Compassion's not a willed thing. It's
a sort of involuntary, genetically programmed twitch or something, emerging with
people. The compassion just comes.
Conceptually, the Hua-yen (Jap. Kegon) philosophy, which was a great philosophy
that died out because it was too complicated, really, I think, but very
brilliant and interesting, tried to describe the philosophy of what you see
under that change. Usually in zen we give operational definitions. We say, "Do
this and then tell me what you see," rather than, "What you will see is this."
Because people get fixated on what their idea of what those words are and it's
very hard then. But typically, people start to see the subject-object barrier
breaks down. You see that you are the universe and the universe is you, for
example. You meet the people of the tradition. You understand what they were
talking about.
Is that your question?
QUESTION: Sort of.
JOHN: It's too vague, isn't it, for you?
QUESTION: Yes.
JOHN: Well, what would you like? Ask me a very specific question.
QUESTION: Well, when you said, `you are the universe and the universe is you,'
that certainly that would have some affect on behavior. I just want to go back
to something that you said about behavior and that this black thing might just
grab you. I was thinking more in terms about being consciously aware of what
one does.
JOHN: Yes. Well, I think the things is how much of container is there. I
think character is in some sense a container for insight. Soul is the container
for spirit in the same way. If we've done a lot of work and we're already
patient and we've worked with our own fallibility some and we're humble and we
have integrity and we're honest about our weaknesses, then there's a much better
container there. The insight will come in and won't tear us up too much. We'll
be happy and compassionate and people will probably think we're a little bit
better in our lives. People around us will notice the difference and we might
change our career paths or something, but generally I value steadiness a lot.
Being a child of the sixties, I suppose. In spiritual training putting one foot
after the other and accepting the darkness when it's here is very important.
Then the light comes. I think there's a trust and a patience in that. That we
don't believe the propaganda from the ministry of the mood when it comes. We're
patient and we wait for things that are hard to pass because we know underneath
that there's a knowledge. We don't have to trust so much because we know.
That's for me the fine difference. But then we still have to do that soul work
I described, the character work. Actually to have a good eye and a poor
character is a horrible thing, I think. Terrible thing. Torment really. And I
think in the tradition when I look back, I can see who were in that dilemma.
3. QUESTIONER: First, I want to see if I'm understanding what your saying.
What you're saying is that you have the enlightenment experience, and there's
that part of it. Then there's also the human being and all the faults of the
human being and everything else. What I'm wondering, it seems like the main
thing people are trying to get when they're looking for enlightenment is the
enlightenment experience. From what I understand that you say, you're saying
that there's more to it than that. There's more that needs to be done. I'm
just wondering what would you say the purpose of enlightenment is. What would
you say the goal is for people that . . .
JOHN: Well, the purpose of enlightenment is to forget that you're enlightened.
That is one thing that is very true. Yamada Koun Roshi was one of my teachers,
my grandfather, who David and I shared as a teacher. He was very strong on
this. If somebody was visible in a crowd, they weren't enlightened. His idea
was that he had to go and shuffle into the subway like everybody else in Tokyo,
smoked a cigar. He embodied that very beautifully, I think. `The stink of zen'
is an old zen saying. That people with their fresh enlightenment experience are
kind of obnoxious in some way. That it needs to be tended like everything
young. It's beautiful; it's marvelous and it needs to grow old like everything
else.
Our fantasies of enlightenment are rather mechanistic. That we think that
everything grows and changes. We'd never approach a work of art the way that we
approach our minds. But we think that if I have an enlightenment experience,
something static will happen. But nothing static ever happens. It's a river.
It's always changing. Your contact with your enlightenment experience will die
to the extent that you hang onto it in my own experience. So there's a lot
about letting go and then you can have multiple enlightenment experiences. In
the tradition. Today. Over and over again we have to let it go. We have to be
a person--Lin-chi called it a person without rank. Because if you've got rank,
you're a person walking around with a hat on, a fancy hat of some kind. A red
barretta (sp??) or something. And some of your role and you're not living. And
the ecstatic is there everywhere. It's in every moment. It's not just in an
enlightenment experience.
4. QUESTION: The question might have been what's the movement of the whole
thing. What's the direction of the whole business?
JOHN: What's our fantasy of development?
QUESTION: What's the purpose of enlightenment in humanity, or would you say
there is one?
JOHN: What's the grand vision here? Grand visions are not my strong point, but
I'll try. I think it's a noble question. I think that we can have. I think
there are a number of things. I really do want to emphasize that the first
purpose has always got to be--In Buddhist tradition the fantasy of the
bodhisattva, it's a legend, is the person who actually puts off their own
complete enlightenment in order to save other beings. Because if they became
completely enlightened, they'd just disappear off the planet somehow. That's
obviously a fantasy, but it's a very interesting fantasy to me. In other words,
what makes the bodhisattva way is the person who has their floors and knows
them, is doing character work in that way. And that the grand vision always
comes from the very simple integrity happening now in your meditation practice,
in your life. You do something stupid; somebody busts you; you can lie and get
away with it, but you don't lie. It's a very important task. The more
individually we can do our work that has ripple effects. If you really do your
zazen, you have consequences beyond what you can see. They're invisible to you.
I do believe that although it's a nutty belief. It's really true. We can't
measure what those consequences will be. North Americans have a progressive
fantasy where the graph goes up like this. I have an associate who is an
Argentinean zen master and they have this fantasy. Where everything is going
down to the dogs and that's why you need to practice Buddhism. It's just so
hopeless. Our fantasy is that we need to practice Buddhism because it will make
everything better for everyone. And that's my fantasy. I think that there are
possibilities of greater consciousness without splitting--I suppose that's why
I'm talking tonight. You can split off and leave all this mess or you can try
and not split off so much, not be so pure, and try to have the whole thing get a
little bit more enlightened. That's my fantasy about what we do.
5. QUESTION: (Question on enlightenment, Trungpa.) How do you explain
something like that?
JOHN: Well, it's a conundrum, isn't it? It's very interesting and painful and
difficult. My explanation is that it's very seductive to be a spiritual
teacher. When you become a spiritual teacher, people immediately start treating
you a little bit differently. Not everybody. Hopefully, if you're married,
that helps because they won't treat you any differently. But it's very
seductive and there's always going to be traps that you haven't seen before.
I'm always falling into something that I thought I was wise at, but then a new
trap comes along and I fall into it. I think that what we're talking about--You
can say it in two ways. You can say that the insight wasn't good enough. It
was great, but it wasn't great enough. That's the traditional Buddhist answer.
But I think I'm saying something else. That there wasn't enough work on the
character containment level. There wasn't enough work on being patient and
stupid and humble and working with your own darkness. When you're a teacher if
you're in pain, it's very easy to go out and teach and it's very difficult to
stop and listen to the pain because everybody's always asking you to go out to
teach. To go out to teach is a natural thing, but to say, `no,' is not somehow.
So teacher's often end up not having any inner life. Very great teachers can
turn into a shell quickly because that happens.
(Questioner comment ???)
JOHN: Yes, yes. You can get very good at the techniques of meditation that
allow you to not have to sleep much and things like that,
(Some text missing. Tape had to be turned over.)
But I see the goal as this lived enlightenment, is the expression, it's the
lived thing.
6. QUESTION: (Zen and bringing things together ???)
JOHN: I'm just beginning to feel myself to start talking about things I don't
know shit about. That's one of those things that destroys teachers, really.
Let people think we know things. Then, dammit, I start giving advice. So with
that proviso, that I don't know anything either, let me say that I think it's
good to practice in the time of chaos. I think that that's fine. I wouldn't
want someone else to have to put up with the chaos and not me. Zen specifically
was developed exactly in a time of civil war and the great koan tradition was
coalesced when Ghengis Khan was coming through with his horsemen and burning the
cities. People thought it would be very good to do a little zazen. It might
help. The great tradition was designed for the many ways, the different
possible ways. Some people just wanted to go off into the mountains and
meditate and hold the world in that way in some way. The way the Hopis doing
their ceremonies hold the world for us. Other people wanted to go and talk to
the Mongol overlords and try to get them to stop burning cities and to rule the
place. Some zen masters did that, too. So there are many opportunities.
There's not one way to go. The great traditions always should be good in hard
times. Any tradition can be good in easy times.
7. QUESTION: I wanted to ask you another question about this. I want to ask
how you see how--The person has this enlightenment experience, let's say, and is
coming back to themselves and working on the character or purifying the vehicle,
something like that. How would you say or how do you see how that could, or
would it, have an impact in the world and what would that impact be?
JOHN: Well, you will feel yourself moved to do something. What do you do? If
you're a carpenter, you'll make different kinds of furniture eventually. You'll
do something in the world. You'll have an influence on the people. You'll
touch people. You won't be able to help touching people and they will be
changed a little by interacting with you.
QUESTION: In what way would that change them? What will that do, inspire them?
JOHN: Mostly people. What's the big change? To find out that there's a way is
the greatest change. To realize there really is a way through the world. To
acknowledge that the world really is a dark wood and very chaotic and is full of
these animals jumping out and baring their teeth and it's full of our own
weakness and self-indulgence and getting lost. Yet there really is a trail
through the woods. There' really a path. So to acknowledge the truth of the
difficulty and that there really is a path, I think, are the greatest treasures.
Actually, they're the first noble truths of Buddhism. That you don't even need
to have learned that to get that that's a great treasure. When you have a path,
people will see that. You don't have to beat them over the head with it.
8. QUESTION: We've talked a little bit about some of the abuses and ethics of
the teachers. I tend to be more lax and think that they're just people.(???)
But I think that there is much more difficulty with the ethics of
psychotherapists. I'm confronted with a personal problem right now with a
friend who's in therapy and would like to get out and somehow can't escape
because of that closed relationship. I have a personal conundrum of trying to
get in there and offer advice without being asked for advice and I don't know
exactly how to do it. But I'm more concerned about that kind of closed group of
the therapy session or the group which doesn't allow--I don't think it allows as
much examination or interaction from the outside as from the inside. Do you
have any comments about that?
JOHN: Anything can be a cult. Zen can be. Psychotherapy can be. It can be a
folie a deux, a folie a infinitely receding series. So, I don't know. There
are many psychotherapists who are manipulative, just like a good many zen senior
people who are manipulative. So, I'm not sure. I'm more interested in healing
zen than in healing psychotherapy, I suppose, is what you ask brings up for me.
What I'm interested in--Michael and I were talking today about that very
question, what's the concept of redemption. Spiritual leaders have screwed up
in some way. We're being very dualistic about the way we've handled this.
We've either thrown the bastards out or abused them, reviled them for years, or
denied that there was a problem. Somehow neither of those is quite right, is
it? But people who have harmed us can also have given us a great deal. People
who have wounded us mend our hearts in some ways. Something better needs to be
done here. We need to hold that idea and stop abusing people, but also look at
what is true and what will really work, what do we want. So I'm not looking at
that from the point of view of the student. I never really felt--I felt very
pissed off with my spiritual teachers, but never felt that they ever really did
any bad ethically or morals. I think anybody who's not hated their spiritual
teacher with a passion hasn't really walked the spiritual path, at some stage.
Anybody who hasn't walked through that hatred, hasn't walked it either.
Something comes up where you've just got to find your own way in some way. I'm
meandering. I think we have to hold these two things together. People really
do screw up and we can't say, "Oh well, boys will be boys." On the other hand,
you can't say, "Oh, they're a demon. Let's cast them out and purify the
tradition," because then you just produce another demon.
With your friend, I don't know. My friends are very recalcitrant to my wisdom
as I am to theirs. All I can do is love them and hope they don't damage
themselves too much.
9. QUESTION: I was wondering why you talk--you said at one point about the
enlightenment experience, that it was important to drop it. I was wondering why
you said that because it seems to me that it's important to maintain that
perspective so that you can act with integrity.
JOHN: It's like if you want to write a poem, you can't be a poet. That's
something different from writing a poem. If you want to throw a pot--Anything
that you're going to do if it's going to be any good, you've got to throw
yourself away. Any great action that you do, you can't do it from a position
that you already have. You must throw everything away. You must just trust
that that experience will work in you and lead you. But you can't go around
referring back to some inner model experience that you had. You meet people who
do this with drug experiences. I sometimes think that a good drug experience is
quite damaging because people would have quite powerful, sort of spiritual
experiences often with hallucinogens. You meet people who spend twenty years
trying to recreate that experience. I have a real empathy for some of my
friends because they did that. You've got to throw it away. Whatever's real
you can't throw away. It's like tightrope walking. You can't be up there
trying to do a performance, you've just got to put one foot after the other.
QUESTION: (Cont'd) I wasn't talking about continuously having the experience,
but within the experience there's an understanding or perspective that's given.
JOHN: Right. But you can't help having that, you see. That's just a deeper
trust.
QUESTION: (Cont'd) So you're not saying to drop that.
JOHN: I'm saying anything if you hang onto something, let it go. If you're not
hanging onto it, don't pick it up. Enlightenment. I'm not sure it's any
different. You get up in the morning and drink your coffee or your tea or
whatever it is. And there's a beauty in that. You're still participating and
wouldn't want it to be otherwise. It's important to be born and to live your
life and die and the right way to do it.
QUESTION: I wonder if you had a comment on the idea that most psychological
problems are clusters of deep trance phenomena and that the therapist's role
should be, in effect, to hypnotise the client and that the end result of that
would be a kind of zen mindfulness instead of trance state.
JOHN: No I don't think I have a comment on that. I'm not sure I completely
understand your terms and I don't want to just construct something.
9. QUESTION: (Could you say something about responsibility?)
JOHN: You mean if you have an experience, what is your responsibility to that?
QUESTION: Yes.
JOHN: I've been quite interested in the precepts. There are sixteen
bodhisattva precepts. Taking refuge is very interesting to me. Then there are
ten, essentially, codes of conduct. I take up the way of not lying, or not
stealing, whatever, killing. I've been very interested in them as this form
that contains something, allows it to cook; and on the other hand, as something,
a freeing thing, liberating. So I think of responsibility. Responsibility is
not something that we take and put on like a cloak. We're too small for that.
I think of it as something that's just, again, like compassion, it's a natural
consequence of developing that you want to express in certain ways. You want to
help people in certain ways. How that responsibility will work itself out in
each of us is really such an individual thing. Some people need to become
political activists; some people need to sit on a mountain. I can never make up
my mind which one I need to do. Yes, there is a responsibility for wisdom.
Wisdom comes with its own rather fierce demands.
QUESTION: (Cont'd) (Other teachers and their realization and their
responsibility towards that. How they conduct their own lives.)
JOHN: I don't want it to be thought that I'm condemning someone else for what
they did, but I puzzle, and I worry, and I'm interested.
10. QUESTION: There is a contemporary Christian teacher, Brother David
Steindl-Rast, who talks about how we can translate our spiritual life
into our everyday life. One of the things he said was to cultivate a sense of
surprise everyday throughout our daily activities. What would be the parallel
for that Buddhist thinking or in Zen Buddhism? How do you do that in painful
circumstances?
JOHN: Brother David, as you know, has had a lot of interaction with the zen
world. It's a rather zen thing to say about cultivating surprise. It's a bit
like one of those `be spontaneous' double binds, isn't it? But there's a truth
there. I think that we are open. If you come home every night and you see your
child, it's very easy to stop seeing your child and you just see your
expectation and your image and don't realize that this child is unique at this
moment and has a unique gift and request for you. And if you're just attentive
and don't come home with the idea that you need to read the paper or you need to
do whatever it is, but are open to that child, then something will surprise you,
surely. Attention leads to surprise or astonishment.
The other thing is that there are times when you are in darkness and you
can't--Maybe one of the features of the dark descent that everybody needs to
undergo at some time is that we can't be surprised any more at that moment.
Perhaps that's one of the losses of the descent. A true descent is such a
powerful process it just takes us over and we don't have a lot of choice. The
darkness is very thick. Not until we honor that and start to acknowledge that
does it start to thin a little. I think it's quite important to honor the fact
that part of the spiritual path is often darkness. The darkness doesn't come
just at the beginning. You may have a round of it when you're quite far along.
It can, in its own strange way, be a blessing, but it's a very hard blessing
sometimes. The fierce reality of that I stand for as well.
11. QUESTION: (I was just wondering if you felt it was possible to live a life
of perfection and also if ????)
JOHN: If I say, yes, what will you do?
QUESTION: (Cont'd) (That the realization understanding is something that's not
quite matched with the fact that one is human. . . )
JOHN: Yes, you see the really most important way you can engage with a question
is to really live it. I'm an inferior substitute for that. Anything I say.
It's really important. If you have a question about perfection, which is a
classic koan kind of question you've just brought out and I suppose that's why I
have this impulse to answer you very seriously, that you must live that
question. Ask yourself before you go to bed at night and when you get up in the
morning ask yourself that question and find out what it means and find out how
the question transforms and do zazen holding. As Rilke said, if you're very
fortunate and very faithful, you will live your way into the resolution of the
question. If you are fortunate and faithful, I'm not quoting accurately here,
you will live your way into the resolution of the question. I don't think so
much of perfection as a goal in zen, really myself, but I think that you have
that question is marvelous and if you really honor it and are sincere with it,
it will chase you around and it will make something of your life. Flora
Courtois, if anybody knows of her, was a woman who just followed her question
and had an enlightenment experience. She's got this really badly produced
little book somebody put out called An Experience of Enlightenment, which shows
a good example of some naively following a question and being too stupid to know
that she shouldn't get enlightened that way, so she got enlightened.
13. QUESTION: Did it answer her question?
JOHN: I don't know. It was rather philosophical. She was rather
philosophically minded so it was something like `What is life?' or something
like that. Perfection is a common zen--Some zen masters have taken up that
question. I think of integrity as being more of a pertinent goal for me.
Perfection is not something I ever felt was in my fate. Integrity is
interesting and even that is a sort of approach to wholeness, isn't it? True
wholeness sort of stops. We always need something that can flow.
QUESTION: (Question 12 cont'd) (I was thinking of how perfection relates to the
living ????)
JOHN: Yes, and really we can only answer those questions from the bottom of our
hearts. We must answer it with our own lives, with our own bodies.
14. QUESTION: About the darkness that you just mentioned before. You said we
have to experience the darkness in our lives, this is part of our lives being in
darkness. Confusion.???
JOHN: It may be anything. It may be cancer. It may be depression. It may be
that things just don't work. It may be something awful happening to
QUESTION: (Cont'd) My question was that the way I see it is that spiritual
teachings like zen or any other spiritual teaching would have different means to
look through this darkness and have this path, have a way to deal with darkness.
In that way I was wondering how you understand zen to solve this problem and
whether it does do that today for the people of today.
JOHN: You can't go into life thinking you're going to solve it. It just
doesn't work. There's just too much of the ego level tinkering going on. It's
like an engineer in a garage in Akron, Ohio making an invention and getting a
patent. What we've got to is zazen. Do your zazen. You absolutely have to do
zazen. If you're going to walk a spiritual path, you can't get away without a
spiritual discipline. You have to zazen every day of your life and accept that
you're going to do that for the rest of your life. One. Two. Start noticing
your life. Sometimes you feel awful when you do zazen. It makes you feel
worse. Start noticing that. It's very intriguing. It doesn't always make you
feel better. Maybe your fantasies about better and worse aren't so good. Maybe
they're not so important. So it softens our idea of darkness in that way. But
if you're really in darkness and in pain, it will take you over and--It's like
having the right attitude when you're in a hurricane. Nobody has the right
attitude in a hurricane. You're just in a hurricane and that's true zen. Be in
your hurricane. Some way it will set you down. Something will happen to you in
that hurricane. Maybe that hurricane has a beauty and a value that you can't
conceive of because you keep trying to get out of it or adopt the right
spiritual attitude towards it. A good hurricane will blow away your spiritual
attitude. You won't have one any more. And then what you're left with is the
true dharma. Something that's very real and you can really bite into and it's
really solid, but there's something intransigent about it, too. It's got to
stand up under the worst conditions.
Thank you very much bodhisattvas.
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Some supplementary notes:
A book referred to in the course of the Questions & Answers time is: Courtois,
Flora. 1986. An experience of enlightenment. Wheaton. Ill: The Theosophical
Publishing House, A Quest Book.
(tmc 7.03.93)
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